


Deicide

by Ambrose



Series: Dare to Write Challenge [51]
Category: Winter's Tale - Shakespeare
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-23 00:03:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15593787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ambrose/pseuds/Ambrose
Summary: my take on the prompt: "Hermione was an All-Mother goddess, and her death precipitates a slow end for the world. Most people are waiting in comfortable melancholy for the last moments. Paulina, though, prays until a new god is created from the cosmic lack."





	Deicide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RatherCharmingVermin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RatherCharmingVermin/gifts).



When Hermione died, the world died with her. Not just in the heart of those who knew her, and loved and cherished her. Everyone could feel the world getting a little dimmer, the light of the sun getting a little paler, and at first they thought it was just an impression created by their grief-stricken brains. Leontes thought it fit, in his folly, that the sky would mourn the loss of his wife as he did too, that the land would punish him for his sin by refusing to grow food. But as times passed, and the sun did not grow brighter, messengers were sent to the Oracle and she sends word back that the world is dying. 

As very few knew, Leontes had married a daughter of Demeter, the semi-goddess who blessed the land of Sicily and like Orpheus he'd failed to cherish and protect her and keep her from Hell, and he was being cursed for it. Like Persephone, she had been taken to the underworld, and now Sicily would not see the sun again until she came back. But unlike Persephone, Hermione was truly dead, and there was no bringing her back. 

Leontes wailed and cursed the gods and turned and turned in his rooms, and eventually all he could do was resign himself. His folly has cost him his kingdom, and soon all would die, and that was his fault. He could only accept his misdeed and pay the price. He warned his people, that the end was near, and that all of them who wanted should flee the kingdom and rebuild their life elsewhere, or perish with him.

And he stayed in the castle, as everyone else deserted. His advisers tried to convince him otherwise, but it was his burden to bear, and so he would.

 

Only one other person remained in all of the kingdom, but she had not resigned herself to die and let the land die too. No, Paulina was too obstinate, and she never gave up. She especially did not give up on Hermione. Leontes might tell himself he loved her more than anyone in the world, but she knew that was not true. If he did, he would do everything possible to bring her back. 

He could compare himself to Orpheus, having lost his lover to Hades, but he did not try to get her back. Paulina, however, did not admit defeat so easily. So she prayed and prayed, to Aphrodite and to Demeter, for Hermione to be brought back to her. She tried to find a way into Hades to go get her herself. And when none of that worked, she remembered the story of Pygmalion and she started to learn a new craft. 

The world was dying around her but she created. She made creatures out of stone and marble and clay, and when she felt confident enough in her skill, she started the work of her life, the work that might just bring back her love. And all the while she sculpted, she sung the songs that she learned in childhood, the ones that made people call her mother a witch. The one she had not dared to sing when her dear Antigonus was taken away from here. On and on she sculpted and she sang and she prayed to all the gods and goddesses, until the sky was so dark that she felt there was no more hope, that the world would just crumble around her and the seas might engulf the island. And then she collapsed out of exhaustion. 

She woke up on the ground of her workshop, with a bright sky shining out, and a live, if a little chalky, Hermione laying in front of her, naked as the day she was born - naked as Paulina had remembered her, as she had sculpted her. Paulina could hardly believe her own eyes. She touched her face, took her pulse, and yet she was not sure that this was not a fever dream, that the island had not collapsed with her, and that she was waking up in Hades, tortured by her own fantasies. But when Hermione slowly blinked at her, and the sun through the windows made a halo of her bright, red hair, as if the gods were whispering to her, you won this one. We're not keeping her from you any longer.

She'd saved Sicily, but it did not matter. All that mattered was that Hermione was here, and that she could hold her in her arms again, and no man would ever put himself between them again.  


End file.
